rein-o wrote:
i started a topic and didn't know that it should have been here.
there should be a catagory for discs in the Japanese monster, Kaiju or whatever the title should be.
i don't know if it should be under catagory or collection but there should be an option for them.
i know i have lots of these films but don't own all of them and it would be cool to know others in the series or close to the series.
thanks,
Although not really related, I have info that some of the boards Japanese LaserDisc collectors might have more information about... A Criterion Collection type program of films on Super Beta Hi-Fi tape. By way of background, once SuperBeta (called High-Band Beta in Japan) was released in the USA, the vast majority of pre-recorded Beta Hi-Fi tapes used a modified form of Super Beta Hi-Fi... Since the video carrier had to be raised slightly for Beta Hi-Fi in order to make room for the 4 Noise reduced Audio FM carriers to 'fit' between the low end 688 kHz AM PAL color signal and the luminance signal (as an aside, all forms of NTSC consumer and semi-pro Beta used phase alternating by line chroma encoding to reduce track-to-track crosstalk since azimuth recording doesn't work at frequencies that low) - anyway, later Sony upped the luminance carrier frequencies and deviation again and coupled it with the Beta-I (X1) speed, then, again later they introduced a shift of the luminance carrier to 6MHz, coupling it with the Beta-I speed calling it Super High-Band Beta-Is (in all enhanced consumer Beta formats, including ED Beta, chroma resolution stayed the same low 30 lines horizontally by about 120 vertically).
Anyway, to get to my point, a few years ago I bought a batch of both home recorded and pre-recorded Betamax tapes from a seller who had spent some time in Japan in the late 80's and early 90's, so I was totally surprised to find a prerecorded copy of the original King Kong released on the Sony label. Instead of being in a cardboard slipcase, it was in a plastic shell that looked exactly like the clamshell cases that Compact audio Cassettes came in - it even had a fold-out J-card with all kinds of info about Kong as well as a list of other releases by Sony. What was really surprising was that it was recorded in the Super High-Band Beta-Is w/Hi-Fi audio and Ron Haver's Criterion Collection LaserDisc commentary on the linear mono audio track as well as a still-frame supplement after the film. The print Sony used is clearly better than that used for the original CAV Criterion Collection LaserDisc release and played on my industrial Sony GCS-50, the quality is outstanding.
As far as I know it's the first time the Criterion Collection licensed one of their commentary tracks, since those were basically Criterion's only Self-owned and licenseable resource
About 50 other titles are listed, with some having a check mark indicating they are also available on LaserDisc - unfortunately, it's all in Japanese, so I don't know what the other releases are. But the packaging, presentation and Super High-Band Beta-Is picture quality and Beta Hi-Fi sound is stunning. Since they were released in Japan only, the commentary track on the mono linear track is encoded with the "Dolby-like" BNR - Beta Noise Reduction system that cuts the tape hiss by about 10db.
Does anyone know of, or own, any of the other titles? The listing of other titles on the Beta tapes 'J-Card' lists VHS for about 25% of the titles, but they are simple VHS HQ mono releases and not Super VHS or VHS Hi-Fi and they don't have the still frame and supplementary features. From the yen exchange rate of the time - 1986 or so, it looks like those Super Beta tapes cost about $90 each.
From the quality of my copy of King Kong, Sony had a superb program - its just such a shame it was tape-based.
Thanks list
